Cerdanyola del Vallès, 14th March 2019. During 28 consecutive operation days, the storage ring has worked continuously achieving a 100% of beam availability for users. It means 650 hours of beam delivered without interruption. "This is the first time we manage to obtain these results and we are very satisfied taking into account the great complexity of operating a synchrotron light source", says Francis Pérez, head of the Accelerators division.
ALBA's accelerators consist of a linear accelerator which accelerates electrons up to 100 MeV, a booster synchrotron where electrons reach the energy of 3 GeV and the storage ring where they are kept at the same energy and emit synchrotron light. Several subsystems controlling aspects such as the electron trajectory, the electron energy or the ultra-high vacuum system are running continuously through a control system to ensure that the synchrotron light delivered to the beamlines is of the highest quality.
The accelerators at ALBA are very reliable and have proved very high performance (about 98% beam availability in the last two years). They typically work 24 hours a day, 7 days per week, maintained by a team of operators, who control them and react in case of beam loss or incidents, which might affect the quality of the light delivered to the users, and supported by engineers, who develop new solutions to improve their performance. "These results are the consequence of the outstanding job developed by the ALBA team since the very beginning, starting from a sound design, an accurate realisation and a scrupulous maintenance and development programme. Our competences in accelerator technology are today at the forefront of knowledge", says Caterina Biscari, director of ALBA.
The group is now facing a new challenge, increasing the current of the electron beam, to provide higher photon flux to experimental beamlines. The second run of the year has started just three days ago, with electron beam current of 200 mA, still maintaining the 100% availability.
